Connect

Got a Love Question?

Sign up to get free weekly love tips

Do you feel like a nag?

Do you constantly feel like a nag in your relationship?

Do you also feel like you are not doing enough for your man?

If you resonate with the first question about feeling like a nag, then the second question oddly enough is not too far off. Even if you are not aware of it now, feeling like you are not doing enough goes hand in hand with feeling like a nag, even though they are opposite feelings.

I want you to know that nagging is not your fault; there is something bigger going on in the relationship that needs attention and the nagging piece is just a symptom, not the root cause.

As a woman there is a part of us that constantly feels like we are not doing enough for our man. It could be that we feel like our man is saying this to us or it could be that we feel like our man actually thinks this about us, without saying anything. When we feel like the relationship is lacking connection many areas start to break down and nagging is a symptom of that..

Our constant feeling of not doing enough has been adopted by our parents, particularly our moms. At some point we unknowingly uploaded our mother’s way of handling our father or partner and those are the parameters by which we think we have to lead our life. This is all subconscious by the way.

A large wave of GUILT come crashing down on us, as soon as we begin to stray away from the beliefs we learned from watching our mom (when we were 1-7). It is inevitable.

And guess what starts to happen when we feel guilty; we put a ton of pressure on ourselves, so we either stop doing what we think we should be doing altogether or we go into overdrive trying way too hard. Either way the pressure builds internally, so when you ask your partner to do something, even if you think it sounds nice, it comes out in a way that doesn’t quite land the right way for your man.

It has an undercurrent of bitterness, because the belief instilled so long ago creates pressure making you feel trapped, which then gives you little freedom to do what you want, making you say things like “I SHOULD do that.”

This bitterness can be felt by him; even if you think you said it nicely. He will find a way not to do what you asked him to do because he feels that bitterness creating little to no motivation to do anything you ask.

For example, in my case I felt like I wasn’t being a “good” wife because I started to get busy building out my business and I couldn’t cook as much I used to. As soon as I started feeling the guilt, I asked myself how my mom shows her love to my father. She shows her love through making fresh tasty food every single day. And she firmly believes that showing her love through cooking is making sure my dad is well taken care of and loved. If you were to ask my dad if he feels loved by that you would get a different answer, but that is a whole other article.

Because of this guilt I would force myself to cook even when I didn’t want to. I would then became extra critical of his actions because of the “extra” work I took upon myself to do. For example, I would ask him things like why isn’t the trash taken out. He would reply “I’ll take it out later?” I would instantly get annoyed and think “why doesn’t he ever do anything?? I am busting my butt to cook for him and he can’t even take out the trash??”

Do you relate? Do you see the problem?

Okay so how do we move ourselves out of this cycle without looking like a nag?

I want to be clear there is much more to this phenomenon than you think, but what I reveal here will start you down the right track:

Think about how your mom treated your dad/partner and start to make connections around what beliefs you adopted about how you should be in your relationship. If you can’t relate it back to you , simply write down your mom’s patterns, and think about how that relates to you. Write those down on a piece of paper.

Write down how you would like to be, from a place free from being for or against how your mom would react to your dad/partner,. You need to get in touch with a belief that suits YOUR situation. Your mom was in a different situation.

Start to catch yourself in the act of old beliefs. If you hear the word SHOULD come shooting out of your mouth, that implies you don’t want to do something but you feel you have to, which stems from a belief. Take a moment reflect take a deep breath and think about what you really want to do. Take out the sheet of new beliefs, if needed, and read aloud to yourself.